With the death of Mr. Theobald Mathew the Inns of
Court lose one of their wittiest frequenters. Much of that wit, well seasoned with ripe wisdom, is preserved in the four volumes of Forensic Fables and For Lawyers and Others. And some anecdotes no doubt have been fathered on him which had other parentage. But one of the most familiar certainly was his own, though it has often been transplanted and acclimatised elsewhere. At a time when the reading-room of Lincoln's Inn, of which Mathew was a Bencher, was much frequented by dark-skinned students, he went into it one day, and seeing a single white man there walked up to him with the amicable interrogation, " Dr. Livingstone, I presume? " He was challenged by a friend as to whether the story was true or invented. " Invented," he admitted—" by me." Mathew had , a large family, which at one period was usually in process of being increased. He was asked one day how many children he had. " Six," he answered, "—and (after a rapid calculation on his fingers) two-thirds."
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